How Survival Anxiety Enabled Dictatorship in Eritrea - Part 3

In the first two parts of this series, I argued that Eritrea’s dictatorship did not begin with Isaias Afwerki, nor did it emerge suddenly after independence. Part I showed that unionism, stripped of slogans, was never simply about Ethiopia. It was a political mentality centered on securing dominance inside Eritrea, even if sovereignty had to be negotiated. Independence, in its deeper sense, meant choosing Eritrea politically and dismantling inherited hierarchies. The mentality to dominate did not disappear with independence; it just adapted.

Part II of the series examined how the armed struggle, while necessary and heroic, resolved the question of sovereignty but left the question of citizenship unresolved. Liberation unity hardened into political monopoly. Sacrifice became permanent legitimacy. Wartime discipline, secrecy, and suspicion were carried intact into statehood. Dictatorship, therefore, was not a betrayal of the struggle, but a continuation of its unresolved political culture.

Part III turns to what followed socially.

Eritrea is not a country that can be ruled by a dominant ethnic, religious or regional group. It is a country that can only sustain through coexistence. This is not a moral claim. It is a structural and historical fact.

By region, Eritrea has eight regions, only three of which are predominantly Tigrinya speaking. By ethnicity, Eritrea has nine recognized ethnic groups, only one of which is Tigrinya. By religion, Eritrean society is plural, and even within the Tigrinya community there are multiple Christian denominations, with Orthodox Christians likely no more than thirty percent of the population. Within the Tigrinya society itself, there are deep regional rivalries. The same goes to the Eritrean Muslims because the Muslim society itself is internally plural. Region, ethnicity, language, and local history mattered deeply. Coastal and inland. Lowland and highland. Different ethnic communities. Different political priorities.

Therefore, there is no natural supermajority in Eritrea. No ethnic group. No religion. No region. Eritrea is an impossible supermajority state. It survives only by balance. Yet Eritrea has been ruled for decades by a system built on control, uniformity, and fear. This contradiction did not happen by accident.

The Domination dream in Eritrea, therefore, grows out of fear rather than confidence. When a group senses that it lacks demographic, cultural, or political security, it compensates by building structures of total control. This exposes the uncomfortable truth.

The problem was never that any group had too much power. Neither was that no group had enough to dominate, yet parts of the political culture came to believe that dominance was necessary for survival. This belief took root in a country where survival can only be collective.

Eritrea’s independence was not secured by numbers. It was secured by collective sacrifice. Low population figures in Eritrea are not signs of weakness. They are evidence of cost. Cost paid through martyrdom, displacement, prolonged war, destroyed families, and delayed population growth. In Eritrea, low numbers mean high contribution. But instead of producing humility and shared ownership, this reality produced fear. Fear of replacement. Fear of marginalization. Fear of losing influence in a plural society. That fear shaped our institutions and then fear became Governance. When coexistence is perceived as a threat, control begins to look like protection. That is how dictatorship became acceptable. Not because Eritreans desired repression, but because uncertainty felt more dangerous than authority.

Dictatorship was not sold as domination. It was sold as stability. Stability from chaos. Stability from fragmentation. Stability from imagined internal enemies. Fear became governance.

This structural reality applies to Eritrean Christians, including Tigrinya society. Tigrinya dominance is not possible in Eritrea. Not by region. Not by religion. Not by ethnicity.

The internal diversity of Tigrinya society itself, across regions, denominations, and histories, makes monopoly power impossible without repression.

Yet a political culture shaped by survival anxiety came to distrust coexistence and overvalue control.

This mindset also did not emerge in a vacuum. For centuries, Ethiopian imperial ideology imagined itself as a Christian island surrounded by hostile seas. Muslim nations outside. Muslim populations inside. Non Orthodox Christians treated as suspects. Non Amhara identities are treated as peripheral.

This worldview justified domination in Ethiopia. And its psychological residue crossed into Eritrea. Some Eritrean Christians absorbed this survival logic even while resisting Ethiopian rule. Colonial rule ended, but colonial fear survived. When Ethiopia colonized Eritrea, fear enabled it. When Eritrea later accepted dictatorship, fear enabled that too. Different rulers. Same instinct.

But this reality does not stop with Christians. There is no Muslim supermajority capable of dominating Eritrea either. History makes this clear. During the armed struggle, Eritrean Muslims demonstrated immense sacrifice and leadership. Yet they did not consolidate political dominance, not because of weakness, but because Muslim society itself is internally plural. Region, ethnicity, language, and local history mattered deeply. Coastal and inland. Lowland and highland. Different ethnic communities. Different political priorities. The fragmentation of the ELF was shaped by these internal divisions among the muslims. The emergence of the EPLF was made possible in part by this fragmentation. This is not an accusation. It is a structural reality. Muslims, like Christians, could not produce a unified supermajority capable of domination.

Eritrea is not a country where one group lost the race to dominate. It is a country where the race itself is impossible. Yet instead of abandoning the idea of dominance, the political system exploited fear on all sides. Each community feared marginalization. Each feared erasure of sacrifice. Each feared losing influence. The regime did not invent these fears. It organized them. When survival is imagined as zero sum, control replaces trust.

The dictatorship promised security without coexistence. Unity without pluralism. Stability without citizenship. To the Christians, it implied protection from demographic uncertainty. To the Muslims, it implied protection from historical exclusion. To the regions, it implied protection from marginalization. But control cannot substitute consent in a country built on balance. So repression expanded. Institutions collapsed. Citizenship was suspended. What began as fear management became permanent domination.

Eritrea did not win independence to replace external domination with internal fear. It won independence to prove something rare in history: that a country without a supermajority can still be a nation. That lesson was never completed.

Therefore the next phase of Eritrea’s struggle is not about removing one dictator. It is about unlearning survival politics in a society where survival is collective by design. Until fear is confronted, not just power, Eritrea will remain independent in name and colonized in spirit.

Eritrea was never meant to be ruled by dominance. It was meant to survive by trust. And fear is the betrayal that made dictatorship possible in post independence Eritrea.